-3-

Where Hermione goes to meet the subject of her book and the secret object of her affections, Harry Potter.

Hermione bit her lip, hard, and tried to stop her heart from palpitating. Standing on the doorstep of Godric Hollow was nerve-racking, on several levels. The horrid image of old Bathilda Bagshot unravelling like wrapping paper and releasing that horrid horrid snake on poor Harry still replayed in her mind if she let it. She was so stupid that day! She almost cost Harry his life. She did cost him his wand. It just went to show how brave her Harry was. She could never return to live in this house. But Harry didn't mind. Her Harry never let terror or hardship bend him. Hermione took a steadying breath. She would not embarrass herself in front of Harry. Fear, shame and, of course, bashfulness, she could let none of those impede her now. She would not make a fool of herself today. She would be brave. She would tell him at last and face the consequences, whatever they were. Her chances may be slim, but still! She simply had to. Today was the day. He must suspect it already after her altercation with Ginny, so it wouldn't come out of the blue. She'd be magnanimous and apologize to Ginny (who, as planned, wasn't about) first thing and when Harry would ask what made her lose it, she could tell him. She'd finally reveal her feelings to him. She had so many neat arguments prepared for this moment. Her maturity (re: Ginny was such a girl!), their long time together (re: only she shared the same defining history with him. Only she could truly understand what he's been through!), how she balanced him (re: Ginny is a, a stupid broom chaser!). What else. Maybe her assets? She had it all written down at home. Why didn't she bring it here to review?! Maybe she could nip back home and, or wouldn't it be better still if she wrote it all down in a letter? She could streamline her arguments, there would be no stuttering in a letter. It would be so convincing. It would be the perfect letter. And she wouldn't have to see Harry's reaction when he learned of her feelings for him. Hermione cast a silencing charm on herself and shrieked, long and silently. She wouldn't be a scaredy-cat. No more dawdling! She lifted her hand and used the knocker to rap smartly on Harry's door.

It wasn't Harry or even Ginny that answered, of course. It was Kreacher. Wrinkly little Kreacher gave her a long, dubious look, made a "hrraak" sound, before screeching "Master! Miss Hermione is at the door."

Hermione gave the House Elf a reassuring smile. It didn't return it. It didn't even grovel to her. Its stare was… flinty. So. Ginny tattled on her. Hermione clenched her teeth and kept quiet. Eventually, Harry appeared. He looked so adorably homey, with his mane of rumpled hair, slightly skewed round glasses and tight, hand-made Weasley sweater that intimated at goodly well-defined muscles beneath. He was even wearing slippers, all red and yellow. Hermione couldn't help but give him a grin. He didn't return it. He wasn't about to gift her with one of his smiles today. How she longed to see one. She needed it so. Even a hint of one. Harry's smiles always made her feel better. A Harry-Smile wasn't like other smiles. Harry always wore his heart on his sleeve and wasn't ashamed of it. There was no dissembling in him. Not her Harry. His smiles came from the heart. They were so warm, yet still touched with a bit of childish shyness, unfeigned and true and radiant as the sun. But her Harry was in no mood for smiles. He was frowning at her. He wouldn't do this outdoors, would he? Hermione let her grin drop.

"Hermione."

"Harry."

He scrutinized her for an endless moment, his lips tight. Finally, he sighed and gestured her in. She followed him into the seating room. They sat on opposite sides of the overlarge table. Hermione racked her brain for a good opening as the tea and crumpets were set between them. She mustn't let his hostility fluster her. She promised herself she'd be brave. 'Do it,' Hermione told herself. 'Just settle on something already. You're the brightest witch of your age! You can do this.' But before she could decide on anything, Harry started speaking. "Ginny says you were mean to her in the Three Broomsticks. Were you mean to Ginny?" Hermione opened her mouth. Harry didn't wait for her reply. "How could you, Hermione? After everything we've been through." Harry shook his head at her. He looked disappointed. Hermione's stomach hurt. "What do you have against Ginny? Against us being together?" he pleaded with her.

Hermione could hold back no longer. "I'm sorry Harry. I'm sorry, all right? Please don't be mad at me, Harry."

"I'm trying, all right? But it's not easy after the way you acted. It's not just Ginny, you know. I had to read the report they filed on the incident, on you, in the office. They had to call the aurors, Hermione. Against my friend. My reliable, smart friend. Why, Hermione?"

"I was smashed. So copiously smashed." Hermione rushed to say. "I don't remember half of what happened that night." They called the aurors against her?! The memory came back to her, all frazzled and fuzzy. They had to drag her off Ginny, the girl's face was beet red and swollen and her hair was a mess, not pretty at all, she recalled smugly. And then, a bunch of handsome big fellas materialized? Those must be the aurors. Ginny hoarsely whispered something to them and pointed a shaky finger at her from their midst. They didn't look too friendly after that. She didn't remember much after that. They must have dragged her off and dumped her on her doorstep. She woke up the next morning with a splitting headache and her shoes still on her feet. Hermione wondered what Ginny's condition was now. Maybe she went too far. She hoped she wasn't in too much trouble. She wet her lips and tried to recall what her next verbal volley was supposed to be. It was, it was her womanly maturity, right? Yes, that was it. She was mature, not like girly Ginny. Though, Harry may not appreciate that after her little altercation with the girl.

"What happened, Hermione? Ginny may never forgive you and if Ginny doesn't forgive you, well…" Harry didn't finish the thought. He didn't need to. She could see it all in his downcast eyes, the grimace on his soft lips.

She would be unwelcome in his house. Perhaps the occasional meeting at the pub, though not the Three Broomsticks. The Hog's Head perhaps. Damn Ginny to hell and back. Would she take what little she still had of her Harry from her?

"I, I-" She needed to improvise. What to say? What to say? For a moment she considered blaming Malfoy for everything. Harry might swallow it. It was Malfoy after all. But no. She wouldn't deceive Harry. He deserved better from her and anyway, he already heard Ginny's version. He heard the aurors' version! It was time to give Harry her own version of that night's events. "I was feeling despondent because of my book on you. Maybe you've heard. It hasn't been going that well. Ginny, she… you see, well, I went to the Three Broomsticks to get out of the house for a while. I just wanted to have a drink. But then Ginny came over and she just wouldn't shut up about the ruddy book and all her ruddy expectations from it and I guess I lost it? Malfoy was there too," she found herself appending.

Harry looked disappointed. "That doesn't cover even the half of what Ginny told me. She said you attacked her out of nowhere and after she defended you against Malfoy, no less! Yes, she told me Malfoy was there. You tried to strangle her." He didn't raise his voice. He just stared at her, as though, as though she was a bloody suspect he was interrogating! Hermione shrank in her seat under his stare. She wouldn't cry. "And the things you said. You were vile to her. To her and me both. Can you explain that away? You're usually so good at explaining things." he added, a touch of cruelty in his voice.

Hermione snatched a scone from the table and held it in both hands between her legs. She stared back at her secret, unspoken love. He must have felt something for he glanced away from her. She snorted. "So now you know. You know I don't think Ginny is the right girl for you. I kept my mouth shut all this time, I tried to give you the space to make your own decisions, but you just wouldn't see the truth for yourself. She's all wrong for you, Harry. She wants you for your name, not for you. She's immature. Selfish! You hardly know her. You should have listened to her talk about you. She was so crass, she bragged about having you in a broom closet! I was so embarrassed. You could do so much better. I care about you too much to see you saddled with the likes of her for the rest of your life. Honestly, Harry."

"She wanted you to put the time we were in the broom closet together in your book?" Harry laughed, then reddened a bit.

"That's not funny, Harry!"

"Sorry, sorry, Hermione." Harry picked a scone of his own and munched on it. Hermione looked at her own scone. It was squelched beyond recognition. She surreptitiously placed it on an empty plate. "Ginny is good for me, Hermione. I'm sorry if you can't see it but that's the way things are. She loves me and I love her. That's all that matters. Can't you see that? I appreciate that you care, really, but Hermione, I should be the best judge on who is the right girl for me, not you. And I say Ginny is the girl for me. And, if she enjoyed the, erm, intimate moments we had together and wanted to tell you about them, well, I don't mind. It's not like she shouted it from atop a table to everyone. We're all adults, and friends. At least I hope we are." He stared at her honestly. "We'll be married, one day soon. She's here to stay, Hermione. You can't have me without her. Be happy for us. Please."

"But Harry!" Hermione protested, stricken by the thought. Married? She wouldn't cry. She wouldn't.

"Enough! I won't hear you criticize Ginny. It's not your place to decide who I should be with. I value your opinion but I think I know a bit more than you about who I'm in love with, about who is right for me. Who made you an expert on the subject, anyway? It's my life and Ginny is the girl I want to have. That's all there is to say on the subject," he paused. "I hope that settles that." Harry gave her a meaningful glance.

"But… but you never played the field, Harry," Hermione found herself saying. What was she saying? Had she become completely addled? She wanted to slap herself silly and worried that Harry would do it for her. But she couldn't stop. She had to tell him. To finally confess her feelings for him. It was now or never. "You can't be sure she's really the right girl for you. If you gave other girls the chance. You could be so happy with," She could say it. She would! 'With me.' It was so simple. Just two words. She opened her mouth and gulped noisily from her hastily snatched tea-cup. Her tongue burned. "with someone who'd really understand you. Someone a little older than her. More mature. Who could complete you and, and yes, and balance you and not give you more of the same. It's not all about brooms and Quidditch! Ahem. Be with someone who truly loves you. Can't you see, Harry, that I… I know you'd be so much happier with, with..."

"With who?" Harry asked distastefully.

"With me?" Hermione replied in a small voice.

"What? I couldn't catch that last part."

"Nothing, nothing."

"Look, Hermione, I don't need to 'play the field.' I've already 'won my snitch' as the saying goes. Ugh, I'd expect this from Ron, but from you?! What's gotten into you? You're sure Malfoy didn't confound you on the sly that night? You don't sound like yourself at all."

"I'm perfectly fine, Harry!"

"So you'll apologize to Ginny and accept her from now on?"

"I never agreed to that." Hermione took a long, calming breath. "Fine, I'll apologize to her. Look, Harry, what do you see in her? I was sure it was just a school romance when it started."

"You honestly don't get it?"

"I guess I don't."

"Might explain why your book on me is such a flop, not that I'm sorry it turned out that way. I never wanted to be famous."

"Come on! You only got involved with Ginny near the end of the war and even then it was from afar most of the time. And I told you your biography will show the real you to everybody, the human, kindhearted, brave Harry instead of the Chosen-One, the Boy-who-Lived persona you dislike so much."

"Yeah, yeah," Harry sighed. "You said it all before." He looked intently at her. "You don't get it. What do you think makes me me?"

"What?"

"Come on, I'm sure you wrote essays and essays about that for your book. So spill. What makes me me?"

"Your bravery? Your kindness and big heart. Your ability to love unconditionally, to empathize with the weak and the needy. To stick to what's right. To believe anything's possible and inspire others to achieve the impossible. You usually don't want us talking about that."

"Well, thanks, I suppose? But I meant, what gave me that makeup?"

"You sought connections because you were so deprived of them growing up with the Dursleys," Hermione expounded from her introductory notes. "It sensitized you to the suffering of others. The bullying you suffered as a child made you determined to stand up for the little man when you gained the power to do something about it. And you built yourself as the antithesis of Voldemort and all he stood for because people compared the two of you and you couldn't have that. There were also the Malfoys, of course. They were an important counterexample for you." Hermione took a breath. Should she mention her theory on his connection to owls as the consequence of his love for flying and the traumatic impressions left by Mrs. Figg and her cats while he was young? Or should she go with the safer but distasteful Weasley Influence?

"No, Hermione. Just no. What makes me me, what stand at the roots of everything I am are my parents. Lily and James Potter. Everything I am, everything I do grows from that. It's why I live in this house despite everything that happened to me here. It's why I fought Voldemort to the last, it's why I connected so strongly with the Weasleys and it's why I'm marrying Ginny."

"What, because her hair looks like your mother's?" Hermione spat.

"There's so much more to her than that, Hermione!"

"Like what? She reminds you of your dad because she's good on a broom? Her hair is smooth and long like your mom's? Is it that she's James' Potter second cousin?"

"Oh, give it a rest already, Hermione. I don't know why I have to defend myself to you, defend my Ginny, for God's sake. You only see skin deep. And you don't care a whit about my feelings for her. You've insulted her time after time to my face ever since you got here. After I asked you, pleaded with you, to stop it. Write your stupid book. Don't write it. I don't care. I don't want to see you until you get over your nonsense and truly apologize to Ginny. Do you even know how much this hurts me to do this?"

Hermione felt her eyes tearing. She clenched her lips and blinked rapidly. "Fine, I'm going."

"Then go already."

Hermione half ran from him, feeling devastated. She collapsed in a nook in the next street, cast her strongest Notice-me-not charm on herself and cried her heart out. It was hopeless. Hopeless!